Think Atheist2017-09-26T22:07:27ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalysthttp://api.ning.com:80/files/18X2qcxpLSyLHj0HZwE8c-ADT6wVeXGfZ*6IH-MS89sU2*L923GviD3f-BAF4rlhleN38hxLeNHsZZN2A7s3xJUh2fiQfal8/544510260.jpeg?xgip=6%3A0%3A252%3A252%3B%3B&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://www.thinkatheist.com/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=3k0h2vw644f0m&feed=yes&xn_auth=noSelf-confirmed atheists volunteer for a "mystical experience"...tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-09-25:1982180:Topic:16322072017-09-25T18:25:45.745ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
<p>After this event, over 70% no longer identified with atheism. The study suggests that "mystical experience" may be a metanoia, a conversion experience for atheists. This is a study that was published earlier this year, 2017. In the link below, Roland Griffiths elaborates more on this very interesting research.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bu3q3GMHfE#t=30m31">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bu3q3GMHfE#t=30m31</a></p>
<p></p>
<p>After this event, over 70% no longer identified with atheism. The study suggests that "mystical experience" may be a metanoia, a conversion experience for atheists. This is a study that was published earlier this year, 2017. In the link below, Roland Griffiths elaborates more on this very interesting research.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bu3q3GMHfE#t=30m31">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bu3q3GMHfE#t=30m31</a></p>
<p></p> I am nuke proof. I hope yar 2.tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-09-20:1982180:Topic:16320142017-09-20T00:11:21.808ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">I am nuke proof. I hope yar 2.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">I enjoyed a good chuckle the other day when a friend of mine, with a Southern drawl spoke to me.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Thars gonna be some nuken on this cheer earth. King of the terrorist Trump gonna see to thatun thare chore. He be itching for a fight don’tcha know. He gonna…</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">I am nuke proof. I hope yar 2.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">I enjoyed a good chuckle the other day when a friend of mine, with a Southern drawl spoke to me.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Thars gonna be some nuken on this cheer earth. King of the terrorist Trump gonna see to thatun thare chore. He be itching for a fight don’tcha know. He gonna tell everyone to fight or shut up real soon.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Trust me now when I say this. Listen good ifin you can. I am nuke proof. I hope yar 2. We gotta do something. Our leaders are incompetent to beat the band.</font></p>
<p><font size="3"><font face="Calibri"> </font></font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Terrorism is a puny thang as compared to what’s to come from the likes of Trump, Kim Jung –Un et all leaders in the U.N.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">The U.N is not , perhaps cannot, do it’s job of brokering peace. All because everyone thinks themselves right about something or other. Insane right?</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Trump, terrorist and other vigilantes are a puny problem, as compared killing machines like the forces at hand in the U.S.A. Trump will show then tell.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">As usual, the U.S.A. will use war to quiet the fracturing of society that is presently happening in the world. God has truly abandoned us.</font></p>
<p><font size="3"><font face="Calibri"> </font></font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">All of the political and spiritual Gods and all their minions will flee, that is all people, if Trump gets peeved.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">I am nuke proof. Are you?</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Regards</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">DL</font></p>
<p></p> Will Muslims love Trump? They are whiny little bitches just like him.tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-09-07:1982180:Topic:16318082017-09-07T18:42:37.896ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Will Muslims love Trump? They are whiny little bitches just like him.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">You Owe Us an Apology</font></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMJATBMebj8"><font color="#0000FF" face="Calibri" size="3">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMJATBMebj8</font></a></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Don't bite the hand that feeds…</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Will Muslims love Trump? They are whiny little bitches just like him.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">You Owe Us an Apology</font></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMJATBMebj8"><font color="#0000FF" face="Calibri" size="3">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMJATBMebj8</font></a></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Don't bite the hand that feeds you.</font></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZZlo0WZ_iU&amp;feature=youtu.be"><font color="#0000FF" face="Calibri" size="3">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZZlo0WZ_iU&amp;feature=youtu.be</font></a></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Brand New Leather Jacket</font></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq_lhlIn1e0"><font color="#0000FF" face="Calibri" size="3">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq_lhlIn1e0</font></a></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">I like Trump better than the average right wing Muslim though. He just grabs pussy; he does not get the knife ready for a clitorectomy.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">All that aside; I think that we should all apologise to every Muslim we meet. After all, we do not want to have them stop buying our weapons and stop killing each other and turn against us.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Oh wait. They just might have already done that, given the numbers.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><a href="http://www.therebel.media/tiffany_gabbay_april_19"><font color="#0000FF" face="Calibri" size="3">http://www.therebel.media/tiffany_gabbay_april_19</font></a></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3"> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Regards</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">DL</font></p>
<p></p> Unholy? Atheists should embrace the science of religiontag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-08-22:1982180:Topic:16316402017-08-22T16:15:56.325ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
<p><span>“Belief-ologists” are revealing how religion works. Belittling their work does nothing to further the secularists’ cause, but learning from it might...</span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span><a href="https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/11180000/sciencefish-800x533.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="align-full" src="https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/11180000/sciencefish-800x533.jpg"></img></a></span></p>
<p>IT IS just over a decade since Richard Dawkins lit the blue touchpaper with his book <i>The God Delusion</i>. It introduced much of the…</p>
<p><span>“Belief-ologists” are revealing how religion works. Belittling their work does nothing to further the secularists’ cause, but learning from it might...</span></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span><a href="https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/11180000/sciencefish-800x533.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/11180000/sciencefish-800x533.jpg" class="align-full"/></a></span></p>
<p>IT IS just over a decade since Richard Dawkins lit the blue touchpaper with his book <i>The God Delusion</i>. It introduced much of the world to the so-called new atheism – a forceful rejection of religion based on the premise that scientific materialism offers a superior explanation of the universe, while religion is a corrosive influence on society: a pathological meme planted in the minds of defenceless children.</p>
<p>Though a great read and a liberating influence for many closet atheists, <i>The God Delusion</i> largely omitted a new strand of scientific enquiry emerging around the time it was published. Those working on the “science of religion” – a motley crew of psychologists, anthropologists and neuroscientists – explained it as a by-product of normal cognition. Thanks to evolution, they argued, our explanation-seeking minds find religious ideas intuitively appealing, gobbling them up as a hungry trout swallows a fishing fly.</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p>To many disciples of the new atheism, this was little more than, well, heresy. They decried it as “accommodationism” – an illogical and often harmful attempt to pretend religion can still serve a purpose now that science rules the roost. Never mind that the cognitive by-product theory does not imply that religious beliefs are true – far from it. Nor does it claim religion and scientific materialism are compatible. It merely attempts to explore religious belief and disbelief using the tools of science, rather than rhetoric.</p>
<p>The new atheists attacked it anyway. In terms of public debate around the appropriate role of religion in society, this was a mistake. It alienated as many people as it won over, leaving the new atheists preaching to the converted, polarising the debate and dissuading moderates of both secular and religious persuasions from getting involved at all.</p>
<p>Perhaps most damagingly, it fostered an idea already doing the rounds: that atheism is a belief system whose adherents can be as blindly dogmatic as any other. In other words, that it is “just another religion”.</p>
<p>At first glance this has all the sophistication of a playground taunting match: you smell. No, <i>you</i> smell. But as a rhetorical device it is highly effective. Tarring militant atheists with their own brush undermines their claims to the intellectual high ground, and when it came to some of the new atheists, it had the ring of truth to it. But is it really true of all the godless?</p>
<p>Once again, those practising actual science offer answers. The science of atheism, brought to you by the people who brought you the science of religion, says that atheism really isn’t just another religion but something altogether different – although not for the reasons you may think (see “<a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431212-800-faith-of-the-faithless-is-atheism-just-another-religion">Faith of the faithless: Is atheism just another religion?</a>“). No doubt militant atheists will say “we knew it all along”; but perhaps they will also find some common ground with those they had dismissed as apologists.</p>
<p>Or perhaps not. The science of religion challenges core elements of the new atheism: for example, the belief that religion leads on the whole to misery and suffering. Belief-ologists say <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328562-100-the-god-issue-religion-is-the-key-to-civilisation/">religion was the “social glue” that held early societies together</a>. That doesn’t mean religion is required to play that role today. But simply ignoring or high-handedly dismissing its power will not abolish its sway or further the secularist cause. And given the rise of religiosity in global affairs, there is much more than a rhetorical joust at stake.</p>
<p><i>This article appeared in print under the headline “Holier than thou?”</i></p>
<p><i><span>Magazine issue </span><a href="https://www.newscientist.com/issue/3121/">3121</a><span>, published 15 April 2017</span></i></p>
<p></p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431213-700-holier-than-thou/" target="_blank">https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431213-700-holier-than-thou/</a></p>
<p>Related topic: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-nnBWdXEes" target="_blank">The Thinking Atheist podcast - The Myth of 'New Atheism'</a></p> Proof Near Death Experiences may in fact be realtag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-08-14:1982180:Topic:16317342017-08-14T22:56:11.537ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
<p>Today another user on a different forum cited these facts about NDEs. I want to know if this gives a Near Death Experience more credence:</p>
<p></p>
<p>Here are some arguments against current scientific ideas about Near Death Experiences:<br></br>First, Lack of Oxygen to the brain:<br></br>Hogan: Lack of oxygen causes stupor without memories of the experience. People experiencing NDEs report enhanced consciousness not stupor and they remember their NDE. "Dr. Fred Schoonmaker, a cardiologist from…</p>
<p>Today another user on a different forum cited these facts about NDEs. I want to know if this gives a Near Death Experience more credence:</p>
<p></p>
<p>Here are some arguments against current scientific ideas about Near Death Experiences:<br/>First, Lack of Oxygen to the brain:<br/>Hogan: Lack of oxygen causes stupor without memories of the experience. People experiencing NDEs report enhanced consciousness not stupor and they remember their NDE. "Dr. Fred Schoonmaker, a cardiologist from Denver, had by 1979 carried out investigations of over 2,000 patients who had suffered cardiac arrests, many of whom reported NDEs. His findings showed that NDEs occurred when there was no deprivation of oxygen." The primary features of acceleration-induced hypoxia, however, are myoclonic convulsions (rhythmic jerking of the limbs), impaired memory for events just prior to the onset of unconsciousness, tingling in the extremities and around the mouth, confusion and disorientation upon awakening, and paralysis, symptoms that do not occur in association with NDEs. Moreover, contrary to NDEs, the visual images Whinnery reported frequently included living people, but never deceased people; and no life review or accurate out-of-body perceptions have been reported in acceleration-induced loss of consciousness.</p>
<p>Parnia raises another problem: When oxygen levels decrease markedly, patients whose lungs or hearts do not work properly experience an “acute confusional state,” during which they are highly confused and agitated and have little or no memory recall. In stark contrast, during NDEs people experience lucid consciousness, well-structured thought processes, and clear reasoning.</p>
<p>Next: Brain activity</p>
<p>NDEs cannot be caused by brain activity during CPR because CPR patients report confusion and amnesia while NDErs report lucid experiences. NDEs often begin before CPR is administered and the quality of consciousness and the pattern of events in NDEs does not change once CPR is started. Also, if consciousness in NDEs is caused by CPR, the patients should remember the pain of compressions and cracked ribs that sometimes occur during CPR, but NDErs do not feel the pain from CPR.</p>
<p>Finally, according to a Neurosurgeon named Greenfield: ""It’s very unlikely that a hypoperfused brain (someone with no blood flow to the brain), with no evidence of electrical activity could generate NDEs. Human studies as well as animal studies have typically shown very little brain perfusion (blood flow) or glucose utilization when the EEG is flat. There are deep brain areas involved in generating memories that might still operate at some very reduced level during cardiac arrest, but of course any subcortically generated activity can’t be brought to consciousness without at least one functioning cerebral hemisphere. So even if there were some way that NDEs were generated during the hypoxic state (while the brain is shut off from oxygen), you would not experience them until reperfusion (blood flow) allowed you to dream them or wake up and talk about them."</p>
<p>What do atheists have to say about these arguments for an afterlife?</p> Belieftag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-06-20:1982180:Topic:16298592017-06-20T17:59:21.126ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
<p>It seems that I feel myself to be a GNOSTIC ATHEIST. Despite not being able conclusively to say there is NO god, I so strongly don't believe in one-or any-I just don't believe that one is possible. Just superstitious nonsense written in various books. It's all crap. That is how feel and wish I had more allies.</p>
<p>It seems that I feel myself to be a GNOSTIC ATHEIST. Despite not being able conclusively to say there is NO god, I so strongly don't believe in one-or any-I just don't believe that one is possible. Just superstitious nonsense written in various books. It's all crap. That is how feel and wish I had more allies.</p> Moving to atheistzone.com soontag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-06-01:1982180:Topic:16284782017-06-01T18:47:24.949ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
<p>We are moving to <a href="https://atheistzone.com/" target="_blank">atheistzone.com</a> again. Some of you might have already registered at atheistzone.com. Please test your credentials at <a href="https://atheistzone.com/" target="_blank">atheistzone.com</a>. If you have forgotten your password, please reset it. If you have have forgotten your username, please check the emails you received from atheistzone.com or contact us via …</p>
<p>We are moving to <a href="https://atheistzone.com/" target="_blank">atheistzone.com</a> again. Some of you might have already registered at atheistzone.com. Please test your credentials at <a href="https://atheistzone.com/" target="_blank">atheistzone.com</a>. If you have forgotten your password, please reset it. If you have have forgotten your username, please check the emails you received from atheistzone.com or contact us via <a href="https://atheistzone.com/contact-page/" target="_blank">https://atheistzone.com/contact-page/</a>.</p> Agnosticismtag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-06-01:1982180:Topic:16284752017-06-01T16:49:56.847ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
<p>I feel that agnotisicm is the personification of PASCAL'S WAGER.</p>
<p>I feel that agnotisicm is the personification of PASCAL'S WAGER.</p> I'm not an atheist anymore...tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-06-01:1982180:Topic:16284702017-06-01T02:29:03.780ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
I'm not really sure if I ever was. But now more than ever I am convinced there is a God...I have been on the fence a long time but now it is super clear to me.
I'm not really sure if I ever was. But now more than ever I am convinced there is a God...I have been on the fence a long time but now it is super clear to me. Alex J O'Connortag:www.thinkatheist.com,2017-05-31:1982180:Topic:16281742017-05-31T23:18:57.987ZTraceyhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Catalyst
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